


Ian is not a labrador puppy name

by WingcommanderArthurShappey



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Arthur's first love, I will defend bisexual Arthur to the death, M/M, Other, Teenage Arthur, this is my favourite headcanon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-06 23:51:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1877163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingcommanderArthurShappey/pseuds/WingcommanderArthurShappey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He sits next to Arthur in their English class, and he smells of warm honey cake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ian is not a labrador puppy name

There's a new chap in Arthur's class, and he's...

he's...

he's, uh...

...he's confusing. Arthur's... not sure about him. He's got brown hair, and there's a robot on his shirt. Today, he wears a shirt with a robot on it. He doesn't wear that shirt every day. But today, he's wearing it, and it looks nice on him.

Arthur's noticed him right away, right when he entered the classroom for the very first time, and Arthur looked up from the grizzly bear he was drawing on his Physics homework, and there was this new boy who suddenly made him feel things he'd never felt before, because his eyes were the colour of soft caramel toffees.

Arthur knows he's not supposed to feel that way about the new boy, even though he's not sure _what_ he feels. But there's something about Ian that makes him stare and stare and stare and blush when Ian stares back. There's something about him that makes his belly tingle in that _highest point of the roller coaster_ -y way. There's also something about him that makes Arthur just a tiny bit frustrated, and his name is just _one_ of those things.

Ian is a name that is far too short and uncomplicated for someone who makes him feel so many complicated things at once.

It's not fair.

It's like his parents decided to call him Ian just to say "Look, world, we give you Ian, and he's just some tiny chap with some tiny fingers and some tiny toes like all other babies, and he's never going to make anyone feel a thousand of confusing things at once, especially not any people called Arthur."

Yeah, and he _knows_ that that's rubbish; he knows that Ian's parents probably _didn't_ think that when they picked that name for him, but another thing about Ian is that he makes Arthur think all sorts of confusing and wrong things.

It's just that... coming to think of it, Arthur feels like it would be more appropriate for _him_ to be called Ian and for Ian to be called Arthur, because Arthur Gordon is a name that's just a tiny bit too complicated and long for someone as plain and simple as Arthur, and you can't fit all the brilliancy that sits next to him in English class into three little letters.

Ian can draw, he's brilliant at writing and good at sports and the way he looks and the clothes he wears make Arthur want to smile all the time, and he really doesn't think such a person should be called _Ian_. But on the other hand, he looked up the meaning of the name Ian, and now he knows that it means "God is gracious", and even though Arthur doesn't really know what that's supposed to tell him, he thinks that maybe Ian is a more fitting name for Ian than Arthur, because Arthur just means "bear" or "King Arthur", just without the king, and a bear is something a lot less complicated than God and any adjectives that might come with it.

He knows... he knows he’s not supposed to feel like this about Ian. He knows he’s supposed to feel like this about Linda, who works in the bakery down the street and who’s really pretty, too, and there are probably lots of boys who feel that way about Linda. But Ian’s voice makes him think of soap bubbles, and the look in his eyes reminds him of a song Mum used to hum when he was a kid, and Arthur can’t help that.

He’s seventeen, and everyone around him is brave enough to talk to Ian, but he just stares and smiles and blushes and stumbles and trips over his own feet and walks into walls. That’s just another frustrating thing, and it’s not Ian’s fault, but Arthur still blames him just a tiny little bit (because he’s never felt like this before, and if Ian hadn’t looked at him like Arthur was someone really special and astounding and brilliant when he saw him for the first time, maybe Arthur had never noticed how gorgeous and soap bubble-y he is).

Arthur is seventeen years old, and he wonders why he’s never felt like this before. Maybe it’s got something to do with the hair he found on his chest last week. (He doesn’t know how it got there, because it just appeared one day, and now it’s there. He didn't feel it grow.) Maybe becoming an adult makes you hear soap bubbles and see long-forgotten songs in someone's eyes.

And Dad can't know. Dad can't know. Dad can't know.

It's bad enough that Arthur is like he is. It's bad enough he's not like the other boys, it's bad enough he's an idiot, it's bad enough he's getting a bit soft around the middle, it's bad enough he doesn't like sports, everything about him is already _bad enough_ , and he can't know - he can _never_ know that Arthur likes Ian. He can't know that Arthur likes boys. And that means that Mum can't know, either. No one can.

...Arthur's not drawing any hearts. He's drawing dinosaurs with a pattern that happens to look like some hearts.

And one day, Ian's smiling at him, suddenly, and nudging him in the ribs, and saying "So. Top of the year, eh?", and Arthur goes so red in the face he thinks he must look like a warning sign, but Ian doesn't seem to notice or care, because he doesn't beware of the silly Arthur who's in love with him, he just keeps smiling at him. Arthur makes a sound a bit like a squeak, and then he starts giggling uncontrollably and hides his face in his hands. He puts his head on his desk, still hiding behind his hands, and then he looks up, and Ian is still smiling.  
"Yeah," he breathes, and then they both laugh and for the rest of the day, Arthur feels so hot and tingly and exhausted he can just lie on his table and hide his little drawings from the teacher.

There's... there's a new chap in Arthur's class, and he's everything Arthur loves most about school. There's a new chap in Arthur's class, and he's absolutely brilliant.

And it's a shame, really, but no one can know.

No one.

But Arthur writes a little note that says that Ian's eyes taste like the colour of those little flowers that grow in the cracks between old, orange bricks, and he slides it into Ian's pencil case. Stupid, stupidstupidstupid! Half an hour later, when Ian's on the loo, he steals it back and puts it in his pocket. Because no one's allowed to know. Not even Ian.

And also, it's made him sound a bit like a cannibal.

To distract himself, Arthur reads a book about orcas. Then he becomes an expert on dolphins. But liking something really much doesn't make you like another thing less.

Not even when it's all the orcas in the world against one single teenage boy.

And that's how much Arthur loves Ian - because there are 50 000 orcas in the world, and that's a lot.


End file.
